


don't plan the plan if you can't follow through

by hypotheticalfanfic



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: F/F, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Multi, chapter 1 is T for Teen, explicit for safety, hints of bdsm, usual Widogast angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-04
Updated: 2020-12-03
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:20:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27380326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hypotheticalfanfic/pseuds/hypotheticalfanfic
Summary: Everything has led, inexorably and without pity, to this moment.
Relationships: Beauregard Lionett/Yasha, Jester Lavorre/Caleb Widogast
Comments: 26
Kudos: 110





	1. don't plan the plan if you can't follow through

Everything has led, inexorably and without pity, to this moment.

His hair would whip in the wind that pours from his palm were it not bound so tightly (that morning, Jester wanting to practice a complicated braid she’d seen in a shop window, her sharp nails scratching just-this-side of painful, Veth and Beau giving contradictory and sarcastic advice from the table).

He stands, one scarred arm extended, one hand weaving a cat’s cradle of blue and grey and red (ages ago, the flickering purple-grey of dunamancy, those first visions of the endless smoky possibilities, Essek’s sidelong glance and knowing laugh).

He cannot hear anything but the roar of the wind. Cannot hear Fjord shouting, cannot hear Yasha’s thunder. Cannot see anything but the magic, cannot see Caduceus using the Wildmother’s power to slow his path or Beau and Veth and Jester running towards him. All are swallowed by the louder, the more immediate. The wind, his own heartbeat, his muttering tongue. Not one stumble, not one stutter. No blinking. No mistakes. He has mouthed these words and mimed these motions hundreds of times, laying in a heap with his friends under a shimmering dome, bedding down in inns and caves and prisons across a continent, floating up and down in a tower he wove himself. He has thought them through over and over while walking and walking and walking. He has stepped in their rhythm through war and peace and tribulation, and now he is finally going to unleash what he wills.

And then, a snarling noise: he opens his eyes. The noise of Fjord and Beau, fighting in the hushed, bitter tones of people who have both, independently, realized that they will never agree. He could probably figure out the topic, but his money would be on an argument about tone, or lying, or social niceties. That’s the usual. Nott - Veth, he means Veth - is warm against his back, and he notes again how her breathing changed with her body. No longer a half-hiss, but a soft snore. It’s nice. It’s not bad. It’s just different. A dream, then. He hadn’t been sure.

Today they are bringing some crates for the Gentlemen to an outpost near a fort, and Caleb could, he knows, recall the exact details with a moment’s effort. Instead he closes his eyes again. Perhaps he’ll dream some more. Jester’s sharp fingers shake him, just a little.

“Caleb, are you awake?”

“Sure,” he says, and a long time ago she would have apologized, but she just laughs now. “What are the punchy ones fighting about?”

Jester makes a raspberry sound, her sharp teeth glinting, and shrugs. “Whatever, you know. Who cares. What I wanted to ask you, though, is, after we do this thing for my dad, could we go home? To see my mama?”

Caleb sits up, begins to work the night’s stiffness from his fingers. “Ja, of course. I am always happy to go visit your mother.” Jester’s voice had sounded strained, just a bit. “Is she all right?”

“Oh, you know,” her voice goes thin and high, painfully breezy, and he frowns at her, just a little. “Well, okay, it’s probably nothing? Like, nothing, not a big deal or anything, but Mama, when I talked to her last night she said she’s feeling sick, like pretty sick, and I know it’s a big spell for you to use to get us there but I know if I was there I could heal her, you know, and then she wouldn’t be sick anymore?” She takes in a breath, her first since beginning. “And I mean I know, I do, Caleb, that it’s a big spell every time you teleport us, but I think that we’re not, like, fighting cultists or whatever today, we’re just driving the cart up the road and handing someone something, and, so—”

“Jester,” his voice careful, soft. “I would be more than happy to get us to Nicodranas. Do you want to send to your mother, to let her know we will be coming? Or,” he thinks for a moment, “perhaps save your magic to heal her when we arrive.”

“Ja,” she says, sharp teeth shining. “Thank you, Caleb.” She leans forward, jingling jewelry in her hair and horns, and peers at the still-sleeping (more likely faking) Veth. “I know you’re not asleep, Detective.”

“Aw, farts.” Veth sits up, her dark hair in disarray. “I was hoping I could eavesdrop on their fight, but then you two wouldn’t shut your yaps.”

“Well, come on,” a low voice calls from across the dome. “You can’t expect them not to know you’re faking. You don’t snore when you’re faking.” Caduceus’s eyes aren’t even open. “It’s a nice snore, don’t misunderstand.” He opens large eyes and looks over at Caleb. “Bad dream?”

“I don’t remember,” a fluid lie, an easy one. For some reason Caduceus will often accept a lie from Caleb that he’d call out from Fjord. Of course, it could be that Caduceus knows he’s lying and allows it to happen, there’s no way to be sure. Caleb used to be quite good at reading people. He still is, sometimes. Not always, though.

Yasha pokes her head into the dome, hair done in a dozen complicated twists today. “There is nothing concerning,” she says, “but we should get a move on.” She looks tired, more tired than she had yesterday. “Beau, come help me with the horses.”

_We’ll see them come back all rumpled-ass in half an hour, watch; you can respond to this message._

He bites back a smile. _Surely they’ll hurry, given the task of the day. Guten morgen, Veth._ “I apologize again about the dome,” he says, standing and dismissing the orange-amber swirling energy in one movement. “I was so spent from those wolf things, I just didn’t have the juice for—”

“It’s fine, Caleb,” Fjord’s voice, carefully calm now, spreads out from where he’s walked toward the cart, where in theory Beau and Yasha should be. “Kind of nostalgic.”

“Remember on Rumblecusp,” Jester says dreamily, linking her arm with Veth’s, “the little pictures? That was so nice, Caleb.” He loves her, and he pushes it into the shadows.

Caduceus stretches, towering over the rest of them. “I wonder if you could do that in the tower, in the windows?”

Caleb nods, ideas flaring in his mind like sparks. “I think I could do that. The greatest hits of the Mighty Nein?”

Fjord looks back over his shoulder, moves half his mouth into a smile, and Caleb feels the familiar flush of pleasing someone, anyone. More, these days, he has that feeling: unusual paints in Jester’s room, cats bearing Menagerie Coast cuisine to Fjord’s plate, ever-changing flowers for Yasha, Beau’s family wine in pride of place, hot water and fertile soil for Cad, the things Veth wants when she wants them and where. The tower works so well, and it is so easy to make them happy. He has always liked to make people happy.

“You look good, Mister Caleb,” Cad’s heavy voice sudden and soft in his ear. “Sorry to startle you.”

“What? No, thank you, Mister Clay. I feel good, pretty good. These days.” The cart is full again, and the Nein wait with varying levels of patience for Beau and Yasha to get back. “How are you?” Form, to follow, but also he finds the large cow man fascinating: all that wisdom, so little experience but so easy with people. Caleb is charismatic enough, he knows, training and survival atop what he used to be (flash: a laughing boy playing tag, flash: a boy with many friends, best beloved, flash: a boy who smiled without pain and never seemed to worry about anything). But Caduceus seems to understand people from a purer place: not seeing the angles, like Caleb and Fjord do, but seeing the roots. It’s no less incisive, no, but much less calculating, and Caleb finds sometimes, an envy for it.

Cad smiles, his strange long face wider now. “Oh, getting along. I was thinking, after we get done with this, I might take a few weeks and head toward the Grove. See if our Mister Stone might come with, get him some time in the wilder parts of the world, but either way.”

“Ja, sure,” Caleb says. “A vacation, much deserved.”

“Yeza was talking about stopping in at Felderwin, maybe a couple weeks. See the old family and stuff.” Veth’s voice comes from the cart, from what Caleb had assumed was just a shadow.

“Maybe we all take a bit,” Fjord says, waving one hand at the approaching figures of their monk and their barbarian. “I’d love to see the Grove, Caddy.”

“We have that one other thing,” Jester says, her voice pointed behind its usual laugh. “After this little thing for my dad we promised the Bright Queen we’d stake out that one mine for her.”

“Aw, man,” Beau swings up to sit beside Cad. “I forgot about the mine thing.”

“It’ll take weeks,” Yasha says, her hair much more loose than it had been. “But after that, yes, a vacation. I’d love to spend some time at the Xorhaus, it’s been months. Beau?” She blushes, just the tiniest bit, at being for her so very forthright.

“Sure, yeah, whatever you want.” Beau bites back a grin, takes the reins from Caduceus, clicks her tongue, and they’re away.

It is a few days later, and Jester is bored, and Caleb is trying to pay half attention to her and half to the actual watching. They’ve already walked the mine’s perimeter a number of times. Jester has sent a message to Marion, checking that the cold Jester magicked away hasn’t returned, and he watched her face ease at her mother’s reply. They’ve already played fetch with an increasingly-grumpy Frumpkin, and eaten the last stale pastry in the haversack, and now Jester is fiddling with a gold coin.

“Are you all right, Jester?” Caleb sends Frumpkin out to sniff around. Two more hours on this watch, and then he can get some sleep. “Do you need something?”

“To learn to do this trick!” Jester curses under her breath, and now Caleb sees what she is attempting. She tries to walk the coin down the outside of her closed fingers, stair-stepping on each knuckle, but it falls off each time. She tries twice more, then huffs in frustration; he can see a hint of frost grow on the gold.

“Oh,” he says absently. “I used to do that.”

“Can you show me? Beau can do it, and it looks so cool!”

He holds out one hand, by now used to the way firelight glints off of the scars. “It takes a lot of practice. I may not be able to do it anymore.” But he can, of course he can, and it’s just the same as it always was. It feels like water dripping on the ridges of his hands, and then his thumb moves the cool coin back to the start without him having to even think of it.

Jester claps silently, her face alight. “You’re so good at that, Caleb! How long would I have to practice?”

“A while,” he moves the coin again. “I did this for years - we had a game with little clay disks, when I was a child, and when I would wait for my turn I would do this. And then at the Academy, I would read and move one of my coins. Hours and hours.”

“Like you do with your lights now?” He nods, and she looks satisfied, a cat with cream. “What kind of game?”

“Um, it is hard to explain.” He hasn’t thought of this in years. “You had a board, a round board or a stone, or you would draw a circle on a table, but you wanted something flat. And then you had the disks,” he pauses the walking coin, holding it between two knuckles, “to play with. And there were, um, parts of the circle that were worth more, that you earned more points for,” a shudder (flash, his mother’s crowing laugh at victory, flash, his father’s broad smile, flash, the original Frumpkin warm on his small feet), “for landing your disk in, and obstacles in the way that made it harder to, to land in the right place.”

“Oh, wait! I know this game, but the people at the Chateau always played with coins. Mama is very good at it.” Jester fiddles with one adornment on a horn..

“I would assume she would be, yes.” He smiles at her, he loves her and he presses it flat in his heart. “I was quite good, once.” He remembers throwing a round piece of bat shit into a tankard. “At games like that, I mean.”

“Oh, ja? You should have played tankard pong with us!”

He startles. “I was just thinking of that.” She smiles, and he knows that she would be objectively beautiful in any setting: soft and curved and charming, with the smooth skin of someone raised on cushions and good food, and the open heart, too, of someone who has only recently begun to learn that the world holds no particular love for her. He knew, now, that no one could spend long in Jester’s company without falling a little in love. And some, well. Some couldn’t stop falling. “Next time, perhaps.”

Another long night at the mine’s mouth, another long watch. He doesn’t allow himself to wonder - she’s taken watch with him, or he has with her, for a while now. It’s not because they are both so very observant, although they are, nor that they spend the whole time chatting, though sometimes they do. It’s just become normal: one watch a night, when they need to keep watch (which is rare these days), the two of them.

“I am mostly done with the most recent smut you gave me, Jester.”

“It’s so good, right? When Barbara and Melody finally kiss in that cave?” She holds the back of one hand to her forehead, a silly swoon, and he watches the fabric drip down her wrist.

Looks away, fast. “Yes, quite good.” He smiles at her, just enough so she sees it, not so much that he has to look at her again. “What are you reading now?”

“Aw, man, I left it at the Chateau!” She scoots around to face him, frowns. “It’s—I don’t remember the name, but it’s about, like, this town, and every day the town explodes and the day starts over? And then these three detectives show up and have to figure out why, I guess.”

“That sounds interesting.”

“Well, it’s kind of funny, which is pretty cool, but it’s also I guess part of a series, like there’s seven of them I think and this one’s in the middle, which obviously I didn’t know, you know, so there’s like this big mystery,” she makes a spooky hand motion, “or whatever. I hate starting in the middle of things! I can tell there’s jokes I’m missing.”

He bites back a laugh. “Ja, I am the same. Don’t worry, Jester. We can find the ones before it. Perhaps the Brenattos or your mother could keep an eye out as well, once we know the name.”

“Maybe on vacation you can go to the shops with me!”

He freezes, just for a moment.

“Did you not want to come to Nicodranas for vacation?” She peers at his face. “That’s okay, Caleb, if you want to go hang out with Essek or something, you know. I just got used to it, I guess, the two of us hopping over there whenever, and you always like to be near the ocean, you know?”

“No, Jester, I had,” he clears his throat. “Honestly, I had not thought of what to do. I suppose I thought it would be smart to shut up in a library or something and work.”

“On vacation, though?” She frowns, and he loves her, swallows it down and puts it away. “You could study with Yussa, I guess, but I was hoping you’d hang out with me! There’s so much to do in Nicodranas and we never get to spend time there, like there’s shows and music and food, and you could swim all the time, and we could have so much fun. But,” she sobers, “oh, of course, Caleb, you need to work, I know that. That was pretty silly. I guess I—”

“No, Jester, I would love to, to spend some time on the coast with you.” He is edging far too close to saying things he shouldn’t. “And you’re right, I can study with Yussa some and spend my spare time squiring you around. Dress shops and things, no doubt?”

She laughs. “Maybe more dresses for horses. Oh, and you’ll want a new coat,” and she starts doodling, the pair of them carrying armfuls of books and baked goods, and he loves her. Breathes it in and out, tries to let it seep away.

A few weeks of mine stakeout take ages and ages. Eventually, finally, they catch the saboteur, the handsome fire genasi hired to burn the place down. He’s charming, and beautiful, and Caleb takes a few moments to revel in his obvious interest. Caleb has liked many people, of many races and genders and shapes and sizes, and while he wasn’t always comfortable with the attention he does, quietly, like to be thought handsome. The others manage to contain the saboteur long enough for Caleb to teleport them all back, to hand him over, to spend a few nights in the Xhorhaus.

It’s been too long, and they all go a little wild. Drinking parties under the tree that end up half-naked and confessional in the hot tub are de rigueur, and Caleb makes his excuses to avoid them after that first night when he admitted, quietly, that he’d have slept with the genasi saboteur had they not met in those circumstances. The others had laughed good-naturedly, had said nothing actually hurtful, but it had rubbed wrongly, had felt too much like reporting after a mission for—no. And so, instead, he works: studies and copies and does endless calculations. Pops his head in once in a while when the room’s gotten too raucous or, more ominously, too quiet, and it’s during one of those pop-ins that Jester reaches for him.

“Caleb!” She is too loud, too warm, too close, and he loves her. “Good, please can you walk me back to me and Beau’s room, well, my room I guess since Beau’s found,” turns to shout over her bare shoulder, “found other arrangements!”

Caleb can just see Beau’s raised middle finger, behind her back, her front pressed against Yasha's form, her mouth too occupied for her usual invective. “PDA, really, Beauregard?” He calls, feels a little drunk just from being near them. “What are you, a teenager?” A double bird from her, and he laughs, offers Jester his arm. “Are you drunk, Jester?”

“Not drunk,” she insists, “no, just very hot. The hot tub is so hot!”

“Well,” he says, and he loves her and he’s half-laughing, “ja, it’s a hot—”

“I know it’s a hot tub, Caleb!” She bares her teeth at him, and she’s laughing, too. “Obviously! Duh!” They giggle, and he is a little surprised every time, how easily she can make him laugh. It’s not new, she’s done it since the beginning, or at least since the dodecahedron. But it’s a surprise, still, every time.

“Will we go to Nicodranas tomorrow?” He reaches for her door handle, intending to hold it open for her. She—she grabs his wrist, holds it tight. Her hand is cool, even with the flush on her cheeks, and it chokes off his words. He can feel his world narrowing to that contact, to her beautiful eyes as she stares into his own.

“Caleb,” she says, and the teasing is out of her voice. “You’re my very good friend. You know that, right?”

A fish, gasping for air. No sound comes from him.

“I care for you, very much,” she is so vulnerable, all soft skin and open heart. “And I know you feel, sometimes, like you don’t, you know, deserve to have friends, or to be happy, or for anyone to love you. But that’s shitty, because I think you’re great. We all do. You know that, don’t you, Caleb?” At his gaping, she barrels on, “And if you ever need anything, or need someone to talk to, or need to, you know, tell me anything, you know I’m right here, right? I don’t even share with Beau anymore, so just come in whenever, and I’ll be here, okay? And the same when we’re staying with Mama, you know, I’m always there.”

A wheezing breath, and he manages, “Okay.”

She smiles. He loves her. “Okay! Good.” Up on her tiptoes, her soft full body pressing against him, a kiss on his cheek - nothing, no doubt, nothing at all to her, and she lets his wrist go and allows him to open her door. “Good night!” Closes the door behind her.

That he does not collapse until he has closed his own bedroom door behind him, that he makes it all the way to the bed before he shatters, is, he thinks, a testament to his will.

The moons over the ocean look painted on the sky, and he can feel the sand working its way through his fine trousers and against his skin, and he should get up, but this is where he tripped and half-fell after a long, difficult day and too much free wine at the Chateau’s show, and right now he cannot think of a good reason to rise. Soon, but not yet.

A voice from behind him. “Hey, Caleb.” She is, as always, radiant. A new dress, green and silver as always but, too, a pretty lining in a soft brown, her wrists and shoulders (and their freckles) bared to the moonslight, and in the sea breeze it dances around her calves, flares up in the wind. The dimples at her knee wink at him, and if he was a better man she, _scheisse_ , she might allow him to place his hand there. Feel the soft skin, press into the muscle behind it. He is, he thinks, perhaps a little drunk.

“You look very nice,” he manages to get out, in Common, even.

She sketches a curtsy, “Thank you, Caleb!” Sits down beside him, the sand no doubt soon to ruin her dress. “The water can be very calming, you know. Hey, Caleb? Are you okay?” Her tone is still light, still cheerful. “I know you said you were okay earlier but I also know that it was a hard day, with Yussa, with whatever you were talking about with that spell, and that sometimes you tell us you’re okay when you’re not.”

He stares out over the sea. The silence hangs between them for years. “When I was very young,” he begins, not sure for once where the words will lead him, “my father was a soldier. Have I told you this?” He is much drunker than he thought, and he turns to look at her, catches his breath at the moonlight dancing on her skin. She shakes her head, her face open and so beautiful. “So, uh. He was a small man, to look at. Not quite my height, and skinny, like me. And I always thought he was just a regular soldier. But I wonder, now, what he did in the war. No doubt they planned to tell me about it, but it was more than ‘a soldier,’ I think. Not that he was what I would have become, no, but,” he huffs. “He was something more. I won’t know now. Or I could look it up, but they might lie, and I wouldn’t know how he felt about it, I wouldn’t know the important parts. I think,” a deep, shaky breath. “I think we would have an awful lot to talk about.”

She nods. “What was he like?” Watching him closely, careful to skirt any painful spots, and he loves her so much.

“Funny.” He had meant to say “kind” or “faithful,” but the liquor had brought other memories to bear. “He was always making Mama laugh. He would, um,” another swig from the bottle. He offers it to her, knowing she’ll turn it down, not able not to offer anyway. “You know how Fjord is very good with accents? He was much the same, though of course not quite as skilled. He would imitate people, the village priest or Mama’s mother, or anyone. To make us laugh.” She leans forward, and he feels her cool thumb on his face: tears, it seems, have appeared, and she’s so gentle, and he loves her. “But he was a serious man, too, in his way. I had to work hard, had to help in the house and the gardens and go to church any time the doors were open, and study, always study.” A shudder. This silent crying, he has learned so well how to do this, and he knows it makes her sad to see it but he cannot make it stop. “When the Academy came, he was so proud.” He cannot find the next words, flounders, turns to her.

“Of course he was, Caleb. Your hard work paid off.” She cups one hand on his stubbled cheek. “He sounds very nice.” He nods. The words have left again. “I bet you look just like him.”

“I wished to, once,” he croaks. “I look more like my mother. She was small, and,” a gasp, and without quite meaning to he rests his forehead on Jester’s soft bared shoulder. “Red hair. Blue eyes. A dimple in her chin.” He can feel tears drip onto Jester’s skin, can imagine them tracing down to the fabric on her upper arms, darkening it. “Verzeih mir.”

“Oh, Caleb,” her voice is soft, as soft as her dress, as soft as her skin, and she is—hugging is the wrong word, he knows. Holding him. Cradling him, one hand on the knot of hair at his neck, one on his curled back. His face is against the side of her neck, now, and he can’t quite figure out how it got there, and if he was not currently weeping he would be so, so tempted to press his lips to the jumping life under her skin, to feel it for himself. “Caleb, I am so, so sorry for your loss.”

“Nein,” he pulls away, sudden and sharp and terrified. “My loss? No, I,” scrabbles at his face, “Jester, I do not, I did not.” Stands, and she looks up at him, her face careful. “You are very kind. I apologize for, for the display.” He feels much more sober in an instant, whether from crying out the toxins Caduceus is always on about or from something else. “I am not someone to console for a loss. It is appreciated, but unnecessary.” She frowns, opens her mouth to say something—“Shall I escort you back to the Chateau, Fräulein Levorre?”

The frown is deeper, her brows furrowed. “All right,” she puts out one hand to allow him to help her up. “You call my mama Fräu. So Fräulein is, what, for kids?” He has the distinct impression that she is allowing a fiction to continue, not that he has actually managed to distract her.

“For unmarried young ladies.” Technically, he thinks, it is an old-fashioned word, used mostly, yes, for children these days. Jester is not a child. Perhaps he used it to create another boundary, another wall. She is so beautiful, so warm and soft and strong, and he likes her so much, and he loves her. His filth will infect her, even if these days he’s halfway used to it, no longer the raw knife’s edge he was when they’d first met. And so, another layer of protection: keep her safe. Keep himself away.

“Well, that’s just stupid!” She tucks her hand into his elbow, and it’s almost too much: her warmth right there, a few layers of cloth, her hair brushing his shoulder. “Mama’s young and she’s not married, and you call her the other one. Stupid.”

“I am very stupid,” he agrees, hoping to hear—there, her laugh. “Come, let’s get you back.”

“Are you drunk, Caleb?”

“Ja,” he says to hear her laugh again. “Just a little.”

“Well, tomorrow night, when you’re not drunk, I have a restaurant we have to try!” She begins to talk, this seaside place that’s new, that she wants to test to see if their food is good enough to cater at the Chateau, and he nods along, guides her steps. He loves her, and he drinks it down and listens.

The place is underwhelming, and her face is so disappointed that he feels very much at fault. “I’m sorry, Jester.”

“Why? It’s not like you cooked it. The cats cook great stuff, way better than this, and it’s overpriced, too, ugh.” She frowns. “I had high hopes.”

“Well, we can find a better place for tomorrow if you’d like.” He memorized the menu, of course, all those appetizing-sounding courses with their disappointing execution, and he can have the cats make everything just so. It will make her laugh, and he will get to hear her laugh. A good thing.

“Walk on the beach?” She hooks her arm through his without waiting. It’s become practiced, easy, to escort her like a lady at a ball, like he’d done so often at school. Once he’d been too afraid to touch her, too afraid of showing something, but she kicked that down as she did any wall he ever tried to erect. Good cheer and a good heart and she never, ever let him push her too far away, and he loves her and he’s grateful.

The beach is so beautiful, always; one moon’s bright tonight, and on impulse he kicks off his boots and stands ankle-deep in the waves, lets them tug at him and soak the edges of his trousers.

“Caleb, look!” She points behind them, and he turns: the city, bright and dancing, alight and alive and magnificent. “It’s so beautiful.”

“Jester, I—”

Her lips are dry, chapped, her teeth are sharp, it’s desperate and hungry and painful, and Caleb could weep with how much he has wanted this. He knew he liked her, knew he loved her, knew he longed for her, but he hadn’t quite allowed himself to know how much he wanted her. Overtaking, burning—not burning, no, never that. But warm, yes, and the impossibility of her wanting, too. He had thought, for some time, that he’d lost the urges he’d once had, that he’d burned them out of himself. But no, it seemed. Instead they had been banked, waiting, and now they roared back to life and he wanted her.

“Jester? You do not have to,” he cannot swallow it back, and she growls, the sound like a shock to his spine, and kisses him again, stifling the threat of him continuing the sentence. She is rough, unpracticed, and—Caleb has kissed many people, both of his own free will and under orders. He has kissed people of many shapes and sizes, many species and genders, many levels of experience and interest. This, here, harsh and clumsy and tired, is the best one.

Putting his hands on her arms, so cool and soft, and pushing her ever so gently away, that’s the hardest thing he’s ever done, all previous difficulties eclipsed. “Jester, one moment.”

She looks—he is shocked. She looks dazed, a little, and surprised, and hungry. “Ja, Caleb?”

“Jester, you are very,” he chokes back “beautiful,” just barely. “You are very kind. But I am, I have many problems. I am not an appropriate person for you.”

Now she frowns, the familiar one, and he loves her so much. “That’s stupid.”

“I am, as we’ve established, very stupid. But I’m not wrong about this.”

“Yes, you are.” She looks satisfied, as though he’s stepped into a trap. “You think you’re too old, and that you’re a bad person, and that I should be with Fjord or Beau or something, right?”

“Well, I—” it’s uncannily correct, but not everything on the list, which would reach to the moons and back.

“Because,” she barrels ahead as she always does, and he loves her so much, “that’s silly, Caleb. Beau’s obviously great and I love her to bits, but she’s with Yasha and although I’d almost definitely be the ham in that sandwich if they asked me, I’m not like pining away for her.” He is growing just a little faint, and she is smiling. “And Fjord, okay, we talked a little about it, before vacation, and he’s sort of like you, he sort of latches on to things when they’re kind to him, and he’s very handsome and charming, of course, and for a long time I thought that was the same thing as being in love, but it’s not, you know? And I think he’s figuring out that, like, liking someone and thinking they’re great isn’t the same thing as being in love, either, and I’m obviously super great, so I totally get how he was confused.”

Caleb is, helplessly, laughing, gropes behind him for a bench. “Okay, okay, Lavorre. You’re on thin ice but I’m here so far.” He scrapes one hand through his hair. “But the other two are incontrovertible truths: too old, and also a murderer.”

She sits beside him, and he loves her, and she rolls her eyes. “Caleb, we’ve talked about murder, obviously. And you know you’re not, not really, not like you used to think. And anyway you already told us all that and I didn’t give up, did I? No, obviously, it didn’t really change much at all, like, it made a lot of things make more sense I guess.” She laces her fingers through his, and he stares: this is happening, actually, and her matter-of-fact voice prattles on, and he loves her. “And then the older than me thing, like, come on Caleb, first of all I’m a grownup, and second the time you were in that place doesn’t really count, you know, you don’t remember it and also it wasn’t like you were, you know, living your life or whatever, you were kind of paused, you know?”

“I am also, ah. A little in love still with a girl who would happily kill us all? Among other people.”

“Well, that just makes you interesting, Caleb,” she grins, “and she’s obviously wonderful, or would be if she wasn’t working for that piece of shit, you know, so I get it. Did she have that cool haircut before?” He gapes, and she waves her free hand. “Never mind, we’ll talk about it later. Look, Caleb? Can I be honest?”

He gapes some more, then shakes all over like a cat waking up. “Ja, always, of course.” He can feel her hand in his, and if he dies at this exact moment he thinks it will be all right.

“I really have been not very subtle. Like, when you first shaved, you looked so handsome, and ever since I’ve known how handsome you are, so there’s that. And then all the times you’ve been so good to me, like with Traveler-Con, and with the Tower, and bringing me home all the time, and how nice you are to everyone, you know?” She scoots a little closer to him, and he can feel the soft flesh of her thigh through the fabric they both wear, and he loves her. “You’re so nice, and you’re handsome, and you think I’m great, which I am, but in a different way than most people think I’m great, you know? And that’s interesting, you’re interesting. And I’ve learned, lately, what it looks like when someone has a crush and what it looks like when it’s more than that.” She scoots closer still, her face tipped up toward his. “And I know you like me, but it might just be a crush, but I like you, and it’s not. So if you want to just, like, try it, and then no hard feelings, that’s okay, but I think, I really do, I think it would be good. Me and you, us. Together.” A pause, and she looks just a hint of sheepish. “So that’s my whole speech, okay, and obviously if you don’t want me I understand, obviously, but—”

This kiss, his, is technically more proficient, probably objectively better, but he will never surpass hers, and if he never feels happy again he has had this moment.

“You know, we used to worry about you.”

“Oh?”

“Well, I did, anyway, and I know Beau did, we talked about it. Probably Fjord too, with his whole oh-no-who’s-secretly-evil thing, and you know Veth always worries about all of us. But ja, Caleb,” she smiles, presses her lips to his hand, barely even a kiss. “That you’d decide you were done with us. And you’d go all, like,” she puts on a deeper voice, “grr, master of time, manipulate the universe, fuck you all. Do some kind of big scary magic and rewrite time or something, make yourself god-emperor and break the world.”

He feels half a smile sneak onto his face. Once, he wouldn’t have, would have withdrawn, gone white and still. “That does sound like me.” She laughs so beautifully, throws her head back, snorts, not self-conscious at all, and he loves her. He loves her, he loves her, he loves her. Here in this bed, her clothes disheveled, her skin cool and welcoming, he loves her so much and she seems to want him, too. He cannot comprehend it, not really, it doesn’t make any sense, and yet here it is, real as the lucky stone in his coat. “You do not, anymore, need to worry about that. Not now.”

“Okay, Caleb. Good. Remember that. Now,” her dancing voice as light and airy as it ever is, and only the undercurrent, the sharp smile, prove to him that he is not imagining this. “I want you to take off all of your clothes, please.”

His mind is already beginning to quiet, and it’s like sinking into a hot bath, soft and safe and cherished. “Yes.”

“Slowly.”

“Ja.” The quiet in him widens, deepens, and he breathes easy.

“Wow, Caleb, you really do like this.” She sounds soft and wondering, reaches out with one sharp finger to trace his brow. “I mean, you know, I know people like things, and I knew people at the Chateau who liked it, too, but look at you. You go all relaxed.” She leans forward to him, down, presses in and over: a kiss, her whole body atop his, holding him down, keeping him steady. “So handsome.” She gets off of him, and he sighs at the loss of her weight on him. “Aw, Caleb, that was very cute. But I believe that I told you to do something.” She crosses her ankles, hands folded in her lap, and he swims up out of the quiet just enough to smile at her as he begins.


	2. the only doom that's looming is you loving me to death

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As requested, a pretty dang NSFW follow-up.

He bends and glories in the folds of her, intricate as any arcane sigil he’s ever seen, more complex and weighty and beautiful than time, than magic, than smoke and chalk and ink and air. He could, he knows, die happy here, bent to work that matters, making her laugh and gasp and keen, hearing her voice dance around him. This would be enough, more than enough, and the impossible chains that pulled him to her tighten ever more around his heart.

This isn’t the first time, or the fourth, or the thirteenth. He’d say he’s lost count, but that would be a lie; it’s only that the counting doesn’t really matter anymore. He has lost the bitter edge that knows - knew - he had a fixed number of times he would be allowed to look at her like this, to touch her like this, to please her like this, and that knows - knew - that each time was one off of the small total, and mourned. But she’s knocked that thought into the stew he can ignore with so many other thoughts that once felt true, laughed it away and kissed it silent, scratched prayers into his back that help him believe. Sometimes she has him stand before a mirror and listen to her tell him he’s handsome, he’s strong, he’s sweet, he is so many things, anything but smart, and tells him to watch himself brighten beet red and sweating, and doesn’t let him duck or scrunch his eyes closed or ignore her. Once he’s nearly weeping with it ( _nein, Jester, no, it’s a lie_ ) she pulls him into her, against her soft cool flesh, and kisses away the heat of his face, and laughs. She always cools him when the fire is too much. He loves her.

She laughs at him, and makes him laugh - it had been some time since laughter, in bed.

With Astrid, before, and with Wulf, and with others, it had been great fun, of course. Young and brilliant and alone, left to their own devices, they had gotten up too much mischief. But for some time before the final test, the darkness of their master’s mind had creeped in there, as well. Bed had ceased to be a place of joy and become a desperate rock to cling to, a place to cry and shudder for more reasons than might be assumed. But with Jester, now, bed is almost always laughter-filled and soft, welcoming and open. He cries and shudders there, too, of course - sometimes when he had been laughing just before - but she gentles him through those waves and others, lifts him aloft and brings the light back.

She has learned what he likes: to be told what to do, to be given tasks, to be praised for completing them. And what he does not: more pain than moderate, true cruelty of word or deed, having his eyes covered. And he, with all his many more experiences, has found her pleasures as well: telling him what to do, expecting him to complete the tasks he is given, clucking her tongue in disappointment when he fails - and grinning as she takes her prizes. And what she doesn’t enjoy: hurting him, really hurting him, being chief among them. She likes to watch him sink into the warm quiet space where everything is easy. She likes to see him take off his clothes and loosen his hair, likes to streak paint on his bare skin and watch him try not to twitch at the tickling. She likes his face, and his mouth, and the things it can do. She likes waiting on the bed for him to finish his studying, then pretending she hadn’t cared at all, and she likes having him work to earn her cries of pleasure, work harder than he has at anything, ever. She is, he believes, the most enthusiastic person with whom he’s ever been intimate - which makes sense, of course, she’s the most enthusiastic person he’s ever met, end of sentence.

* * *

Soon enough, too soon, their time in Nicodranas draws to a close, and they stop by to tell her mother goodbye. Oh, and to tell her, as Jester insists, that they are an item. Of course, he'd assumed Jester would be with him, not shove him towards the stairs with a searing kiss and a wink, not tell him, "Good luck, Caleb!" and turn to the table to draw. Unsteady knees beneath him, he makes his way up to the room.

Frau Lavorre is always devastating, bone-deep beautiful in the same way a roaring fire is, something he feels drawn to in equal amounts to his fear of. And when he tells her, stammering, that her daughter has taken him on asa romantic interest, she laughs just like Jester.

“You mean, dear boy, she’s taken you to her bed?”

“Ja,” the answer too quick, probably, and he can feel the heat bloom up from his collar. “She has.”

The Ruby of the Sea smiles, sharp white teeth in her full, lush mouth. “Good for her. And you treat her well?”

“Ja,” faster, even, and she laughs again. “With everything I have, I try.”

“Well then,” she leans forward, presses two soft kisses to his cheeks. “My blessing, and a warning I don’t think I even need to articulate.”

“No, madame,” he ducks his head. “I know very well what it would be, and, may I say, if I were to hurt her in any way, the punishment from you would be nothing to what I would do to myself. Respectfully.” _She smiles just like her_ , he lets himself think, and then he is kindly dismissed to where Jester, impatient, has been carving Traveler dicks into the tables downstairs.

“Oh, good! Mama didn’t eat you, see, I told you.” She wraps her arm around his, allows him to usher her out to an alcove, watches him start to draw. “Did she do the thing where she said, ‘oh, if you hurt my daughter I’ll have one of my patrons destroy you, grrr,’ or did she just say you’re very lucky?”

“A bit of both, I think,” he says, scrawling sigils in sequence around the circle. “The Xhorhaus, yes?”

“Ja, Caleb,” she is closer to him, suddenly, “but one moment, first?” He pauses, looks up at her, and is pushed down, hard, flat onto his back. “Did that hurt?”

He laughs, not the hoarse and hurting bark but a half-snorting giggle, the kind she’s spiked in him so many times. She takes it as encouragement, as it was meant, and straddles over his hips, her weight digging beautifully into him, her thighs bare beneath her skirts, drawing his hands to their cool smooth skin. She leans forward, full breasts and belly, hands to either side of his head, and smiles. He loves her so much. “Well?”

His hands grip her thighs, and he lurches the last inch upwards to kiss her, fast and filthy, works her mouth open, feels her smile. She shifts her hips just enough that he can feel the heat and wetness of her, even through layers of fabric, and he can feel himself hardening pulse by pulse. Her sharp teeth nip at his lip, at his tongue, and he slides his hands up her thighs, finds the fabric there, slips his hands beneath. Her tail, at the base, is thick and stiff, and, he has learned, as sensitive as the base of his own cock. He grips, one hand wrapped tight, and swallows down her gasp. A steady, rhythmic roll of her hips, and he synchronizes with her like waltzing: one hand around the base of her tail, the other pressing into the meat of her upper thigh, his cock thickening ever more and starting to ache beneath her.

He pulls away, gasping, mouth hot and wet and hungry for her. “Tell me,” he gasps, “what you want, tell me,” his mind going too many directions at once.

“Your hand, Caleb,” she sounds frustratingly calm, not nearly as winded as he’d like, and he loves her,“make me come with your hand.” He lurches back toward her mouth, slides one hand away from her thigh to her front, to the nest of wiry curls and the wetness already dripping from them. The angle is imperfect, as she delights in making him work, and he can’t quite get the leverage he needs to make it as good as it could be, but he is nothing if not a follower of orders. He slides two fingers inside her, the cool of her skin giving way to searing warmth, and his thumb moves in slow, easy patterns against the pearl of her clitoris, not quite touching it properly. She jerks upward when he finds the right place, and he can see her now, can see the flush of purple on her cheeks, see the sweat gathering behind her ears and at her hairline. “Fuck, Caleb,” her voice already wrung-out - had she come already, from grinding? Resolute, at a better angle now, he goes to work in earnest. Watches her shudder, tightens his grip at the base of her tail and holds her there, just a little, gives her the thing she asked for. She is, as she always is, loud and unashamed and so beautiful it’s terrifying, and he loves her so much.

When she sags down onto him, pins his hand beneath her, he stills. Waits a moment, two. She shivers back to herself, blinks down at his face. “Hello, Caleb.”

“Hi, Jester. Are you all right? Is my hand—” a cool touch to his mouth, his kiss-swollen lips, stops the words.

“Good,” she says. “Be still.” Pulls herself up and off of him - the whine he lets out at the loss of her weight, always, is embarrassing but true, and she loves it, and he loves her. “Clean your hand, Caleb,” and he does, hungry for her, the sharp sweet tang of her flooding his senses. “Good.” He hangs in the balance for a long minute, watches her think about him, about what to do with him. “I think I will wait, and have you at the Haus after we tell everyone. I think,” she says, a sharp grin at his moment of frustration, “it will be a good idea to have me be very relaxed, which I am now, thank you, when we tell our friends.” He frowns at her, big and exaggerated, to make her laugh. “You’re so cute. Finish the circle, and you’ll get what you want later, I promise.”

“Promises, promises,” he mutters, getting up, willing his dick to calm down a little. “Always you—” a biting, bruising kiss, her mouth sharp and strong, her hands on his jawline, pulling his face to hers so hard it hurts, and he loves her. His mind quiets again, not quite into the place where he is soft and calm and easy, but a little. Just enough. He smiles at her, completes the teleportation circle, and takes her arm in his to step through.

* * *

They are the last to arrive, it seems: he can smell something vegetal and spicy cooking, can hear laughter and jabbering voices from the other room. Caduceus pokes his huge head out of the kitchen, sees them, lights up. “Mister Caleb!” Caleb lets Jester’s arm go, reluctantly but without trailing it too long, and steps forward to clap the firbolg on the shoulder. “Oh, Jester, you look hungry. I brought some moss from the Grove, thought we could try those cupcakes?” She giggles, and Caleb leaves the two of them to talk baking. Finds Fjord and Veth setting the table, her picking on the half-orc mercilessly, him grinning under it with more ease than he’d had a few months before.

“Caleb, good, you’re back, tell Captain Tusktooth here,” she sticks out her tongue, a Nott mannerism she’d never quite shed, “that forks go on the other side.”

“I’m putting them where I’m told, Nott, give me a break here,” but he’s smiling, and Caleb can’t stop a smile himself. “You said forks on the left, right?”

“No, on the right! Idiot!” She is grinning, too, and for a moment Caleb can see sharp teeth there, but then she turns to him and is only Veth, always Veth again.

“Where is Luc? And Yeza?”

“They’re headed back to the Coast - we found a space he can lease for an alchemy shop. Gotta get it all set up and the wagons were taking too long, so I went on ahead.” She takes his hand in hers. “Have a good time? You got some sun, look at you!”

He blushes bright red, hot and sudden, and Jester chooses that moment to sweep into the room, squeal, and scoop Veth up into a bear hug. “Veth, I missed you so much! Tell me everything!” Caleb feels some stony section of his heart melt: her, so full of love for everything and everyone, and some part is reserved for him particularly. The sear of embarrassment melts instead into warmth, and he slips halfway into that space, that silent embrace of calm, and just watches Jester light up the room. She hugs Fjord, and immediately starts correcting the table setting, and he loves her.

“Yo, man,” Beau’s voice shakes him back up to the surface again, “you ignoring me?” She’s smiling, though, and reaching out for a hug - they’re awkward, still, but at least half for the sake of the running joke.

“Just thinking.” He pulls away, looks at her. “You look good. Yasha feeding you up?”

She grins - her abdomen no less impressive but just a modicum of softness around it. “Yeah, she figured out how to get some of her stuff to taste actually pretty good. There’s a rat thing she makes with some kind of mushroom, it’s fuckin’ addictive. Plus, Jes set up a, like, weekly cupcake delivery from that guy down the street and we didn’t have the heart to cancel it, so,” she wraps one arm around his shoulders. “Good vacation. Ready to punch some shit, though.”

“Where is Yasha, anyway?” Caleb allows himself to be steered up to the roof, and the tree has grown even more. Hundreds of tiny lights, enchanted to twinkle charmingly, hang from its branches, and Yasha is there, stretched out, looking up through its leaves to the night sky. “Oh, hello.”

“Hello,” she says, not looking away. A long, quiet pause, while Beau slips back downstairs. “Come look at the stars.”

He blinks once, twice, lets his brain pull up from the slush. “I know the ones I grew up with. I would expect them to differ here.”

“Come see,” she pats the moss next to her with one huge hand. “I grew up with many of these, we can share.”

He settles beside her, their heads next to each other, his feet somewhere near her knees. “The moss is new.”

“Comfortable.”

“Ja.”

Another long silence, and he feels the itch of needing to do something, say something. “Beau said you had a nice holiday. The cupcakes were a success, then?” Jester had thought of it a few days into the beach time, had asked him to count her words for her so she could do it. He had done so, and had quietly made certain that the funds needed were available, and had that night dreamt of a future he could never imagine, one in which Jester brought him to her bed and fed him a cupcake. A few weeks later had been the beach, the night, the argument and the kiss. Time was impossible, and he would never understand it.

The silence after his question sat in the air, fog in the night, for a moment. “Oh. So you told her.”

“What?” Beet red, burning again. “I don’t know—“

“Caleb.” A gentle reprove.

“Yes. Well, she told me, I suppose.”

Yasha stands, turns to look far, far down at him. “And you’re happy.”

“Ja.”

“And she’s happy.”

None of her statements have been questions, but he answers anyway. “I try to make her happy. I hope she is happy. She seems to be, yes.”

She smiles like lightning in a storm, searing bright, gone like it had never been there. “Not too late. I told you.”

He sits up now, moss stuck in his hair. “Yes, you did. I don’t know when she wants to tell everyone, or if she does, or what she wants, so, if you please—“

Yasha holds up one massive hand. “I will do my best not to chatter on and accidentally let it slip.” Not a smile, but the particular cant of her eyebrows: a joke.

“Yes, your renowned jabbering tendencies, such a trouble.” He reaches up, lets Yasha pull him to standing. “Perhaps some cushions, for our heads? Not that the moss isn’t lovely, it’s just—“

“Sure. We can do that.”

 _Caleb, soup’s on! Get Yasha and come down, we’re hungry._ Veth’s voice in his head.

 _Of course, Veth. Thank you. Be right there._ “Veth says that dinner is ready. Shall we?”

* * *

The party crowds around the rough round table, tureens full of hearty stew and spicy fried greens and thin flat bread and roasted roots, Beau’s family wine and some mead she and Yasha found in the market - the story is funny, mostly Beau narrowly avoiding a gang war and Yasha being her charming self, glowering people into submission. Caleb laughs, eats, feels Veth to one side of him and Caduceus to the other, looks to Jester sitting between Beau and Fjord, leaning across the half-orc to jabber at Yasha, leaning backwards behind Beau to poke Veth in the side with a joke.

She meets his eyes and smiles at him, the same warm smile she always has, and a fierce moment of fear raises up: did he imagine it? Did none of it happen? But then her smile turns slick and heated, her eyes hood and darken, and he feels the stab ebb away. She is not tricking him. The greatest trickster who ever lived, and she is not tricking him, no. She promised she wouldn’t modify his memory, ever, and his memory is clear and full of her, and all will be well. He allows his shoulders to relax, just enough so she sees it.

Fjord is in the middle of talking about the strange pale deer that wander near the Blooming Grove when Caleb sees her decide. Her round shoulders straighten, her back squares up, her mouth goes from laughing and lush to strong. He sits up, a bit, matching her posture so she will notice it, will not feel alone. She blinks at him, one slow lowering of thick lashes, and he feels his stomach roll over with want. Her tattoo gleams in the light, and her teeth as well, and once Fjord reaches a stopping point, stops to swig some mead, she clears her throat.

“Okay, so, this may come as a shock to you all, but Caleb and I are together now. Romantically, I mean. So, we wanted to let you know. Also, did you know there’s a guy on the Coast who does paintings with like little flakes of gold in them? What were they called, Caleb?” Her voice had sped up notably, the last few words a string of shrill syllables without real content, but he knew what she meant.

“Leaf,” Caleb croaks out. “Gold leaf.” Clears his throat as well. “Very thin pieces, attached to the paint.”

A long minute of silence, Jester visibly tempted to prattle through it, visibly restraining herself.

“Oh, that’s nice.” Cad reaches out, puts more spicy greens on his plate, takes Caleb’s and mounds more on it as well. “Mister Stone? Greens?”

“Uh,” Fjord’s mouth opens and closes a few times. “Sure, thank you, Caduceus. Some of the sauce, too, please.”

“Oh my gosh, you guys,” Jester says, her eyebrows lowering now, “you don’t have to like approve or anything but you could at least react!”

Veth looks uncharacteristically smug. “Ah. Yes. React.” She turns to Beau. “Four gold, pay the fuck up.”

“Aw, man!” Beau grumbles, digs in her pouch.

Yasha laughs, her hoarse chuckle. “I told you not to take it.”

“But I really, really thought my timeline was right!”

“Well, you were, what’s the phrase,” Veth looks to the sky, moves one hand in a lazy circle, “an utter dumbass. I told you they’d hook up on vacation, it was so obvious, why would you bet against me?”

“Sucker’s bet,” Fjord says, his color back to normal, a chuckle in his throat.

“I thought he was too chickenshit to do it!” Beau looks to Caleb. “No offense.”

“None taken.” Caleb looks down at his plate. “You’re right. I am, and was.”

Jester snorts, and he loves her so much. “Ja, I had to basically drag him to a nice restaurant—“

“Which was not that nice—“

“Exactly, Caleb, and then I had to time it just right, and I still had to give a whole speech about it! It took forever!”

He is bright red, wants to melt into the floor as much as he has ever wanted to, and yet he is laughing, because she is laughing, because their friends are laughing, now, too.

* * *

“When this is all over and you want to retire or something,” she says later, purple in the face and catching her breath, “you should really think about party planning. I wasn’t kidding!”

It takes him a moment to catch back up. “Oh. Oh! No, I don’t think, I mean,” he rolls from his back to his side to face her. “That was all for you. For you I could make the best convention in Exandria, but I don’t think I could make such a party for strangers.”

“Hmm.” She sits up, fluffs her pillow, lays back to face him again. “What will you do, then? Teach, maybe?”

“Am I retiring soon?”

Exasperated. “Well I don’t know, Caleb, what if we get what we want, you know? What if we get those assholes all sorted out and the peace sticks, you know? We should have a plan.”

He nods, runs one hand through his hair. “Fair enough, Lavorre. What’s your plan?”

She leans over to him and digs sharp teeth, very gently, into a love bite on his shoulder. “Very handsome. Plan? Oh, I don’t know.” Bites again, slower and deeper, and he shudders beneath her, and he loves her. “I kind of thought, oh, well, maybe I’ll go back to Mama, but if you can just jump us back there anytime she needs me, I can really go anywhere. And then I was sort of thinking about Kiri, you know, but she has her family now and I don’t want to take her away forever or anything. And then I thought, oh, maybe we could go stay with Bryce for a bit, they’re great, but there’s not much really to do in Alfield unless you want to be a farmer. So,” she licks the reddened spot once, kisses it. “I don’t know. We could go to Zadash, or to Rumblecusp, or anywhere in the world. What should we do?”

“Where you go, I’m going.” He pulls her face up to his, kisses her soundly. “Anything you want.”

“We’ll figure it out.” She trails one hand down his chest, his belly, beneath the sheets. “Besides, we have so much shit to do before this even matters to decide, you know? Now,” he kisses her, interrupts her, and he loves her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> LOOK okay I don't write a lot of sex scenes? So grain of salt, wide margin of forgiveness, etc etc thank you and good night.

**Author's Note:**

> title from "A Man's Gotta Do," _Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog_


End file.
